Global Action Plan has a unique partnership structure with two partners at the helm. Our team has a diverse background, including journalism, psychology, education, consultancy and policy.

SENIOR PARTNERS

Sonja Graham

Sonja’s aim in life is to show that the sustainable choice is the better choice, rather than the "green" one. With a background in psychology, she specialises in the design of behaviour-change programmes that reduce environmental impact. Intent on closing the gap between research and practice, Sonja founded a Behaviour Change working group with four universities (The Real-World Sustainability Research Team) and has authored papers on motivating environmental behaviour.

Chris has been leading programmes such as the multi award-winning Operation TLC since he joined Global Action Plan in 2005. Chris's achievements include directing staff engagement programmes for three of the big six energy suppliers in the UK, and training pan-European climate leaders and environment officers to become environmental advocates. He has also written environmental policies and roadmaps for clients such as corporations and NHS trusts, and informs policy through consultation responses and conference presentations.

Global Action Plan currently has a Board of nine trustees with Jeremy Oppenheim as Chair, Andy Cartland as Deputy Chair and Jonathan Katz as Treasurer.

Andy Cartland

Deputy Chair

Andy co-founded Acre in 2003, a leading recruitment business helping to catalyse social and environmental change. The organisation has significantly out-performed the UK recruitment sector over the past ten years and in 2014 was awarded Recruitment Agency of the Year at the UK Recruiter Awards for innovation, transparency and positive disruption.

Outside of Acre, Andy has co-founded some of the UK's most successful and innovative online product comparison businesses, has been an advisor to social impact consultancy Uscreates, and acted as an advisor to the ICRS, a professional institute dedicated to supporting CR and Sustainability professionals.

Ellen Miles

Ellen is a creative strategist, specialising in digital and social content, and marketing to millennials.

She has worked with a number of high-profile international brands, from both global agency and start-up environments, and has developed smaller brands as a freelancer.

Jeremy Oppenheim

Chair

Founding Partner of SystemiQ, a new firm dedicated to building sustainable, market-based economies, programme director of the Energy Transitions Commission, lead author of the Better Growth, Better Climate report of the New Climate Economy project, and advisor to multiple governments, companies and foundations on system transformation and resource productivity.

Jeremy spent over 20 years at McKinsey, developing and leading its Sustainability and Resource Productivity Practice (SRP) from 2007-2015. SRP is accountable for McKinsey’s client and knowledge agenda on green growth, including resource productivity, resilience, climate policy, environmental finance, land-use and ecosystem service strategies, circular “closed loop” business models, clean-tech and energy policy.

Jeremy serves clients across multiple industries, including energy, finance, consumer goods and high-tech. He also works extensively with governments in both developed and developing countries. In 2011, Jeremy co-authored a major report: Resource Revolution: Meeting the World’s Needs for Energy, Food, Water and Materials. His core interest is in unlocking the potential for much better economic systems - whether energy, urban, land-use or industrial - in ways that can meet the needs of over 9 billion people by 2030, accelerate and scale disruptive innovation, and regenerate natural capital.

Jeremy also completed a year’s sabbatical from McKinsey, during which time he led the New Climate Economy Project on behalf of the Global Commission on the Economy & Climate. The purpose of this Project is to help senior economic decision-makers identify and prioritise actions that can deliver better growth and lower climate risk. The Commission’s flagship report: Better Growth, Better Climate was launched in September 2014.

Jeremy is also a former Senior Economist from the World Bank (1988-1993). He holds a first class degree from Cambridge University in Law and Economics (1984) and a Masters’ Degree in Public Administration (1986) from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Jonathan Katz

Treasurerer

Jonathan has held a number of senior, executive Director roles in strategy, business development and finance for both large UK public companies (Diageo Plc, Sears Plc, E &O Properties Plc) and more recently, as the Chair of smaller, entrepreneurial and VC backed ventures. Jonathan has been a Trustee of Save the Children and the Chair of their commercial operations (shops, catalogue and internet business), and is Chairman of a number of high growth businesses. In addition he is an active Governor for a large comprehensive school in South London, and Chair of their Finance and Development Committee.

Lisa Poole

Lisa is a corporate communications expert, currently advising the Board of a FTSE 50 company.

Murray Birt is an ESG thematic research strategist at DWS (formerly known as Deutsche Asset Management). Prior to his current role, Murray supported Deutsche Bank senior management in the area of climate finance and implementing the Bank’s climate change business strategy. Before that, he worked with companies to develop consensus policy positions, published papers and lobbied UK and European governments on energy and climate change policies at the Confederation of British Industry. Murray began his career in consulting, policy research and program support for energy efficiency, renewable energy and carbon markets in Alberta, Canada.

Sue Welland

Sue's early career began in national and global advertising and integrated communications for corporations and agencies.

In 1997, Sue co-founded The CarbonNeutral Company, the world's first carbon trading (offsetting) organisation for businesses and consumers. She developed the company through a series of VC fundraising rounds and built out its influence and commercial success. It is now a world market leader.

Sue kept an interest in the company but left day-to-day operations in 2009 to co-found HomeSun which leveraged the government's new Feed-in Tariff and catapulted Free Solar into the UK. She created the largest residential solar portfolio in Europe and sold the business to Aviva 2012.

Sue stayed with the same executive team to build HomeSun Commercial (cavity wall insulation for blocks of flats), sold 2014, and then FlowGem (IoT water flow detection and monitoring), sold to Centrica in August 2016.

Sue's specialities are: innovation, brand and market building from a blank sheet of paper, commercial partnerships, carbon trading, customer service and PR.

Tom Rippin

After some years researching cancer, Tom started his non-academic career at management consultants McKinsey & Company, where he worked across the private, public and non-profit sectors. He transitioned into the social enterprise space, first advising the CEO of Comic Relief on private sector matters and then working at (RED), the business founded by Bono and Bobby Shriver to help eliminate AIDS in Africa, where he was Managing Director for Europe and Director of Business Development for (RED) International. After this, he founded On Purpose, which is he still runs today. Tom is also the Chairman of Spice and an Advisory Board Member of Big Society Capital.

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